Sleep
by Moofy-Fan
Summary: Stebbins had always been different, but none of that mattered right now. It was just walking, walking, walking. So much farther to go, so many miles before he could sleep. Oneshot.


Hello incredibly small fandom. I randomly got struck by Stebbins feels, and so this came about as a result. That and because I really wanted to do something with the poem Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost. Which I don't own, the same as the Long Walk. If either of those things really needed to be said.  
So anyway, here's a little oneshot for you. First time writing anything for the Long Walk, so I hope you like it and please review.

Sleep

Stebbins had always been different.

There was no use denying that, and it wasn't really something that bothered him. What other people thought never did matter much to the blonde. He enjoyed being alone, so no one else rightly mattered.

(He didn't wear bright and mix matched colored clothes to gain anyone's attention. That was just silly. He didn't need attention.)

His mother had told him at a young age exactly who his father was. Even back then he'd been seen as 'a little off' by others, as they kindly liked to put it. Always stuck in a book, any book, as long as it was reading. Fantasy, poems, history, it didn't matter. Just to be in another world. To be someone other than that strange boy that talked to no one.

Reading about the Long Walk had always been particularly fascinating.

When she told him, he didn't question it for a second. He already knew his father wasn't around, figuring out he was a bastard wasn't too far of a leap for the boy.

Exactly _whose_ bastard he was turned out to be a bit harder to swallow, but manageable all the same. It wasn't impossible after all, and once he'd actually started looking into it, sounded quite probable. To think, his father was someone oh so _important,_ but didn't even know that he had a strange, quiet boy dressed in bright purples and greens and blues as a son.

That's when the idea first came to him. He started walking. Walking, walking, walking, as far as he possibly could, and then forcing himself to walk the whole way back again. At first it wasn't that far at all, nowhere near far enough, but as he got older the distance grew and grew.

His mother had been in a panic the first time he'd went out walking and didn't return until the next day.

It had been when he was almost ready, just one more year, and he knew he could do it, when it happened. That huge, intimidating but awe inspiring man had just appeared. The sociopath supported by society had swooped into his life out of nowhere, with no explanation. Set it up for him to be at the end of the walk. To see _exactly_ what happened to those who chose this path.

He didn't walk for a month afterwards.

He had known. He had known _all along. _It was humiliating. It was horrible and degrading and like a slap across the face.

He'd buried himself back into the books. Those worlds created by others that didn't mind that he was different. He was more like them than anything real after all. He'd even been told that he talked like a book, at least by those who'd ever heard him speak to begin with.

Like a book, made of paper and cardboard and ink. Flimsy and breakable and oh so easily destroyed.

He started walking again. He couldn't be like a book. Not anymore. He needed to be a machine now. A machine to show his _father_ just what he could do. He needed to be like those mechanical rabbits at the racing track, faster and stronger and studier than all of those greyhounds chasing after it, no matter who hard they tried.

He would recite poems to himself as he walked, in order to help pass the time. It kept his mind off of being tired, brought him back to the books he wasn't allowed to be like anymore.

You couldn't bring books on the Long Walk after all. Too much extra weight and they would get destroyed if it rained.

He was walking down the cold Maine road now. The Walk was really happening. Poems filtered through his head as he stared at his shoes, occasionally glancing off to the side of the road, watching the trees as they slowly passed by.

_The woods are lovely, dark and deep…_

The other walkers mostly stayed away from him, although he'd noticed that one boy, Garraty was it? Always glancing back at him. The boys had started to drop, slowly but surely, by the hands of those solider now. He wondered how long it would be until it was all over. Something told him Garraty would last a while, the poor naive fool. None of them knew yet it was hopeless, because he was the rabbit. None of them would be able to keep up.

_But I have promises to keep…_

The tiniest hint of a smile crept across his face at the sound of another one of the boys buying his ticket. He hadn't seen who it was, hadn't cared at all really. Flickering his eyes forward, he saw that Garraty was still walking, amidst that strange little group that had formed. Didn't they know they were all going to die? Not exactly the best time to be making friends.

_And miles to go before I sleep…_

Of course, not quite the best time to be making enemies either. None of that mattered though, for the walk had still just begun. There was still so much farther they had to go. So much longer they had to walk.

That strange smile curled up onto his face again. None of the other walkers were paying him any attention, not even Garraty, and he whispered the last line of the poem down at his feet, practically laughing to himself as he did.

"And miles to go before I sleep."


End file.
